Ra: Heart of Glass
by NanashiSaito
Summary: Thirty years after the conclusion of Sam Hughes' (AKA: qntm) Ra, Natalie Ferno is dead, and her daughter, Cara is looking for meaning and understanding of the world that her family indelibly left their mark upon.


"It was supposed to have been me." The woman was speaking to herself, which is to say, to no one in particular. "I was the reckless one. I was the stupid one. I took up smoking, for fuck's sake."

The bartender nodded, awkwardly, unsure of how else to react to this. He was positively relieved when the woman's daughter mercifully walked through the hotel lobby and into the entrance of the bar. At least, he assumed it was her daughter because they look exactly alike. The older one was around his age, and he found her reasonably attractive. She was fit and lean, she clearly kept herself in shape. But her eyes, something about her eyes made her seem much older. She must've been a veteran, he figured. He had seen that dead-eyed stare before from people who had seen far too many horrors.

"Language, _Dulaku_." The younger one said, setting her purse down and flashing two fingers, indicating that she wanted whatever the older one was having.

The woman let out a heavy sigh. "You know I hate that name. You don't just get to pick nicknames, you know. It has the be consensual. I never agreed to it."

The younger woman, somewhere around her early twenties, smiled. "It's a better name than Laura. More fitting. You know, I never got why you shied away from it. You were a fucking titan. You literally brought somebody back from the dead. You deserve a more fitting moniker."

The bartender examined the older woman's face. He had been in his mid-20s when The Incident happened. He remembered as a young lad finding the fierce, resolved look in that young woman's face incredibly attractive. As he glanced back at the older woman, it clicked.

"My God, you're Laura Ferno," the bartender blurted out. If Laura had known him, she would have been surprised at the outburst, as it was an uncharacteristic break from the otherwise stoic professionalism he typically displayed.

"Oh for fuck's sake." Laura rolled her eyes heavily. As if they had choreographed it, Laura and her niece both sank back their drink in a single gulp, slammed their glasses down, and gestured their fingers up for another round.

'Face it. You're a celebrity, _Dulaku_." She put heavy emphasis on that word. "All my life, I've looked up to you. My aunt, the superwoman. I mean mum is..." she stopped herself short, her eyes welling unexpectedly with tears. She wasn't quite used to the change of tense. "Mum was..."

She couldn't bring herself to continue. The act of fighting back the tears in an effort to remain composed made speaking without her voice cracking nearly impossible, so she didn't even try. Thankfully, the bartender had prepared their next round rather quickly and placed it down in front of her. She took a deep swig, and murmured to the bartender, "Might as well make it another one."

Cara Ferno looked up at her aunt, wiping her eyes. "I'm okay. "

"Bullshit. I'm the worlds foremost expert at saying I'm okay when I'm not. I can spot a dilettante. You're not okay, it's not okay. Your mom, if I was a titan, then she was fucking Zeus. She didn't deserve this. This didn't have to happen. "

"Why won't she won't tell me about it, tell me about The Incident, tell me what happened? I deserve to know. Do you have any idea what it's like? She wore this mask of mum/wife, but I knew, Dad knew, everyone knew that she was actually some cloaked thaumic witch-goddess that did something incredible and no one will ever talk about it!"

Laura stared at her, incredulous at her niece's obliviousness. She took a long, slow, deliberate sip from her gin and tonic, letting the awkward moment sink in, and then nodded. "Yeah. I know how that feels."

"Oh. Yeah." Cara connected the dots a few moments too late. But far from letting her faux pas nudge her off her moral high ground, she doubled down. "Well, imagine there was someone alive, someone that you're sharing gin and tonics with after your mum's funeral, someone who could've told you everything you wanted to know, but they won't because… Because 'reasons'. Do you know how that feels? "

"No, I don't know how this it feels to experience this incredibly specific circumstance that's likely unique to you and only you. But if you want to get into a crap sack life contest, I wager I'd win that one."

"Why? Why would you win? Why did you and her… Do what you did? You just… Faded away. I mean you both have done some pretty incredible things. It felt like you to could've run this world if you wanted to."

Laura laughed, dryly. There was an unspoken promise between her and her departed sister that they would not discuss "The incident" with anyone. Natalie had always been better at compartmentalizing than Laura. Everything about Laura oozed the battle scars of Abstract War v2. Cara always felt that Laura was perpetually one drink away from spilling the truth, and she frequently drank with her aunt with the express intent of pushing her past that point.

Natalie, on the other hand, was the picture-perfect model of a housewife-cum-cryptographer that had once been a practicing mage. None of her actions belied any depth of personality beyond the placid front she presented to the world. It was easy to see how Natalie found a husband and had a child while Laura was still an old maid.

After Nick, no… After Ra, nothing seemed real for Laura. A relationship seems so… uninteresting. For a time, she thought that perhaps it was the fact that it was just men that had been uninteresting to her. But after a brief period of awkward experimentation, she found that she was simply uninterested in the idea of connecting with people at all.

Cara noticed that Laura hadn't responded for quite some time, clearly lost in thought, and loudly chewed her ice and swirled her glass around, reminding both Laura and the bartender that she was still there. She made brief eye contact, inclined her head slightly, glanced over at Laura, and nodded on her behalf as well.

Laura blinked a few times. "Fade away? We faded away because there was nothing else to do. I literally went into Hell to bring back your gran. I peaked early. As for your mum... She peaked early too. And that's all I'm going to say about that. What else is there to do? How do you top that?"

Cara put on the best face she could muster and spoke with enough false casualness that an observer who didn't share 50% of her genetic material might not notice she was deeply invested in the answer to this question. "You could bring other people back?" More feigned indifference. "I dunno, like mum?"

Laura stopped drinking. "Are you fucking kidding me? Do you think the thought hasn't occurred to me every damn day since The Incident? What sort of monster do you take me for? Do you think I would be sitting here pounding G&Ts if I were capable of, quite literally, saving the world?" She downed the rest of her drink angrily, and with perfect timing, the bartender provided them both with another round.

Cara had expected this response. She had rehearsed several iterations of this conversation ever since mum's diagnosis. Aggressive, terminal bone cancer. Natalie Ferno had never once complained in her life. So when, on account of some unaccounted pain and exhaustion, she decided to sit out the final scramble up Stac Pollaidh on their family's yearly excursion earlier this summer, both Cara and her father knew something was wrong. Fortunately, Natalie was sensible and did not object to immediately going to see a doctor. After a few excruciatingly painful tests and even more excruciatingly painful days of waiting, the news arrived.

The doctors gave her three months to live. She lasted five. And here they were.

"Don't pretend you haven't been expecting this. And how am I supposed to know? You never talk about it. What if it was, I don't know... a matter of resources? You need some absurdly prohibitive amount of mana or whatever, and that's what has prevented you from being the Angel of Life. Maybe you only have enough mana accumulated to save one person."

"If that were the case, don't you think I would have done it for my dad?"

Cara made a show of considering this thoughtfully, but she had already figured the conversation might go in this direction. "Nah. You never liked Grandpa Doug all that much. I mean, you loved him, sure. But if it were going to be one person, it was always going to be your sister."

Laura's expression softened. "Yeah. You're right." She sighed, and her eyes hardened again. "And it doesn't make a bit of difference. She's gone. They're all gone. Dad, Mum, Nat, and sooner or later, you and me. We're stuck here in our glass coffin, and-"

This was the first time Cara had ever seen Aunt Laura cry in earnest, and it was indecent and disturbing on a visceral level, like staring at a mangled body with its insides spilled out. She was watching God bleed, this wasn't supposed to happen; it showed a vulnerability and fallibility that Cara didn't want to acknowledge.

The bartender had noticed, and timidly walked up and mouthed quietly, "Is she well?"

"Fuck off," both Cara and Laura replied in unison.

"No. I'm not fucking okay. Nat always used to ask me that, even though she knew the answer. No. My sister is dead. Natalie Ferno is dead. She was the good twin. She had humility and presence of mind and restraint and all the things that I didn't. I was the arrogant brat who thought she could save the world but fucked it in the process. She saved all of us, saved me, and what does she have to show for it? She's a fucking wax sculpture in a glass coffin buried in the ground. Whatever it was that was her, her mind, her pattern, it's been lost to entropy. She's gone. Forever. Internalize THAT," and in punctuating frustration, she hurled her tumbler across the room where it shattered.

The bartender looked up in exasperated silence, "M'aam, I'm afraid I need to ask you to respect the decorum."

Laura glared at him insolently and laughed. "Try and throw me out. Just try. Seriously."

The bartender barely kept himself from rolling his eyes. _Plebs_. He walked over to the phone and spoke a few hurried words into the phone.

In the meantime, Cara was pulling a wad of bills out of her clutch, far more than what was actually owed and far more what she should reasonably be spending on her budget and started laying them down on the bar. Laura, on the other hand, picked up the bills, crumpled them, and shoved them back into Cara's hands. "Just watch," Laura admonished her.

Within a few moments, a burly security guard and an older gentleman in an immaculately tailored suit filed through the entrance to the bar, and the bartender pointed at Laura and Cara. The guard advanced, but the older man's eyes went wide and put a warning hand on his shoulder. He walked over to the bartender, whispered a few words, and then approached Laura and Cara.

"Ms. Ferno, to what do we owe the pleasure? And this... this must be Cara? My deepest sympathies to you both." He bowed ingratiatingly low.

"Yeah. Well, just tell," she instinctively looked down to his chest pocket, forgetting that this place was too classy now for name tags, "whatever-his-name-is, that my sister just died and I want to be able to drink and rage in peace in my own damn hotel."

"Yes, of course, Ms. Ferno. And is everything up to your standards?"

"Sure. I guess."

"Very good, very good, ma'am. I'll be off then, and I'll make sure Nicholas is more tactful in the future."

Laura inadvertently twinged at hearing that name. Meanwhile, the majordomo hurried out with the guard in tow, leaving both Cara and Nicholas the Bartender staring at her, wide-eyed.

"You OWN this place? This is... this is fucking Claridge's " Cara gaped. Laura merely shrugged in response. Nicholas was suddenly evaluating her with renewed interest. "Jesus. I was wondering how Dad managed to swing such an insane nightly rate for the room block."

"Yeah. I told him it would be free if he wanted. But he didn't want freeloaders showing up just for a free night at a fancy hotel. He wanted at least some barrier to entry."

"Makes sense. But, wait. Let's get back to the whole 'Aunt Laura owns an absurdly expensive hotel in the heart of London' topic."

She shrugged again. "What else am I going to do? Mana storage was and is insanely profitable, real estate has always been a good investment, and if I ever need to escape, which I often do, I have about twenty different cities I can retreat to and drink in peace."

Cara glared at her. "And here I am eating cup noodles and tinned beans trying to pay off school, and all along you've been loaded. Like, owning-twenty-luxury-hotels loaded. Mum's cryptographic research doesn't pay the bills the same way Mana storage did, apparently."

"You never asked for help. Neither did your mum. She knew I was of means, of course. I never told her, but she could read the financial section, she had to have known. She didn't ask for help, but she needed it. Who do you think was behind all those nameless, one-off shell corporations that constantly bankrolled her department with no-strings-attached grants?"

"Jesus. I saw the size of some of those donations. One of those could pay for two hundred years of university. You didn't think, just maybe..."

"You... didn't... ask," Laura said, through gritted teeth. "Natalie didn't ask, but, she deserved it. She helped me, even when I didn't want it, so I returned the favor. I don't have the right to do that to you. But sure. You want help? Fine."

Laura snapped her fingers, whispered a quick word, and her handbag opened up of its own accord. A book of cheques on a leather backer-board floated up and landed gracefully on the bar. Once movement ceased, a spring-loaded clasp opened, revealing a hidden compartment with a pen inside, which Laura snatched and started scribbling a check out to the University of Essex.

"Here. Add as many zeroes as you want. They can name a whole damn department after you. The Cara Ferno Center for Trivial Bullshit." She angrily ripped the cheque out and tossed it down on the bar. "Give Professor Bartle my regards."

Cara looked wide-eyed down at the check. She wasn't sure what to do with it. In the silence, Laura looked up at Nicholas the Bartender. "When are you done with your shift?"

"Two hours, ma'am."

She looked down at his ringless fingers. "You have a girlfriend?"

"No, ma'am." He gave her a wry smile. "I am one of Britain's honorable bachelors."

"Good. First of all, stop calling me 'mum'. Second of all, I'm in the penthouse." She threw one of her room keys across the bar at him, and he caught it deftly.

She glared at Cara, who was smirking. "What? I need the distraction."

Cara nodded, still holding the cheque. "Yeah, well... Have fun?"

"Sure. I'm going up to my room. I'll see you tomorrow, I suppose."

"Yeah. Right. We can, uh, we can talk about this," she waved the cheque with a punctuated gesture, "when you've dried up a bit."

"Oh, I have no intention of being dry at brunch. But it's yours."

Before Cara could protest further, Laura had packed up her things and departed for her suite.

* * *

 _Later_

It was one, maybe two in the morning. Nicholas the Bartender had long since departed, and she was idly scanning through the collection of Natalie memorabilia she had brought with her. Laura didn't have any permanent home, so to speak of. She owned or was the majority partner of, dozens of luxury hotels across the world, and perhaps a hundred or so motels, hostels, inns or pubs, in other, less well-off areas. Anything of major importance that was too cumbersome to bring with her, she kept in safety deposit boxes, everything else she kept in a backpack and her bespoke, thaumically powered purse.

She bounced from city to city, keeping well away from anyone who would recognize her as anything other than the woman who signs their paychecks. She had made a fantastically large sum of money decades ago when Ed Hatt purchased her mana storage company, Inferno Enterprises. He was, of course, not just purchasing the company, but also purchasing her brainpower. She agreed to the terms, so long as he provided her with a nearly unlimited research budget and that she retained sole ownership of any new inventions she created. He agreed to the terms, so long as he retained right of first refusal on the sale of any of her intellectual property created using Hatt dollars.

If either of them had a mind to, they could have forced a deadlock, but it never came to it: Laura's indifference made sure of that. She sold her ideas to Hatt for pennies on the dollar, which was still enough money to ensure that she would gather an obscene amount of wealth. She told herself that she was different from Hatt, that she didn't waste her largess on insane, overpriced hobbies that posed a clear and present risk to her health. But if she were being honest with herself, which she rarely did, she would recognize that this was thoroughly untrue.

Although she prevented herself from going broke by committing to putting 75% of her liquid assets in the hands of a professional investor who she mostly left alone, she had "invested" much of the remaining sum into funding or donating to scores of private research institutions, think tanks, universities, and other bastions of progress and although some of these were profitable, most weren't. Fortunately, her lifestyle had zero financial overhead, and luxury real estate was a booming business.

She picked up the copy of Natalie's publication, "Thaumically-Generated Elliptical Curves and Isomorphic Intent within Homomorphic Encryption". It was a thick tome, in the academic sense if not physical. Natalie had finished it shortly before the diagnosis, which had prompted her peers to refer to it as "Ferno's Last Theorem", and when Laura had received a leather-bound copy of it, she promptly did what she did with every book or publication that she was only peripherally interested in: she read the abstract, the first page, the last page, and then made assumptions to fill in the gaps.

With Natalie's thesis, she made one exception: she also read the dedication, which was remarkably short.

 _See you on the other side. Love, Nat._

 _Deluded bullshit_ , Laura thought at the time. There was no "other side". Natalie had made sure of that. That fact had really sunken in during the visitation the night before. Mum's death had been graphic, violent, and horrific, and as such, there was a layer of disconnect that prevented it from really sinking in. Mum's corpse wasn't Rachel Ferno. It was a collection of vivisected flesh and brain with metal contraptions poking out.

When Dad died of a heart attack a few years back, he looked like the cliches suggested: asleep. A bit more drawn and sunken, but close enough to the real thing to where if Laura screwed up her eyes and drank enough, she might have forgotten that he was dead. She did not, of course.

But Natalie...

Natalie's death was protracted. Every day, she looked more and more like a cheap, hacked together facsimile of herself, a walking skeleton wearing a Natalie Ferno mask. The effect was disturbing on the most visceral level: although they were different, they were still twins. She wasn't just staring at a physical reflection of herself. Natalie was the platonic ideal version of Laura. She was healthy in all the ways that Laura was flawed. Healthy in all the ways that mattered, except one. Laura's spirit had betrayed her. Natalie's body had betrayed _her_.

Even the barest memory of it brought tears to the eyes of a woman who hadn't cried in decades. Angrily, she resolved to read Natalie's thesis. She wasn't sure if it was closure, or something else, but she felt like reading this was something she needed to do. She turned the first page and saw that it was covered in handwritten letters. Anger gave way to shock which gave way to curiosity, and she blinked away the tears rapidly.

 _Laura,_

 _I hope you enjoyed my little joke from before. See you on the other side... of the page. Ha, ha._

 _As I'm reaching the end of my days, I'm realizing something, Laura. I know that you always thought me as the perfect, platonic version of yourself. But with this last request, I'm about to make, I'm being profoundly selfish. I could rationalize it by saying that you and I both know how this is all going to end, so risking the end a few millennia early wouldn't be the worst thing. But the truth is much simpler._

 _I don't want to die, Laura._

 _But since you are actually reading the contents of this and not just the first and last page as you usually do, that means I am probably already dead, and you're looking for closure, or something else, and that you feel like reading this is something you need to do._

 _So maybe it's too late. It probably is. I think it probably is. But, I know that you don't. Something in your bones resists it. So I'm giving you my blessing to act on that feeling. Not that you need it. But ever since The Incident, I think you've wanted it. So here it is, my final gift to you: go forth and be Laura Ferno._

 _Just do me a favor. Don't screw it up. Love you,_

 _Natalie_

 _P.S. I know about Claridge's, all of the real estate, and all of the "anonymous" donations. You've never been great with information hygiene. I'm sure Cara will figure it out soon enough, too. And unlike you and me, she's never been above asking for help, even if it's indecent at times. So consider this an after-the-fact thanks for all of the help over the years, and a thank you in advance for offering to pay for Cara's schooling._

 _P.P.S. You could learn a thing or two from Cara. Like how to ask for help, because I think you'll need it. But if I know my daughter like I think I do, I suspect that problem will take care of itself soon._

Laura was openly crying for the fifth time in twenty-four hours. She was unbelievably, unimaginably pissed off at the presumption; like she needed Natalie's approval to live her life. But she was even more angry with herself and the fact that Natalie, as always, was 100% right, and it was a relief. She had carried the guilt of ruining the universe with her for three decades, and the only absolution that had any weight whatsoever was Natalie's.

Now she had it. She hated herself for being so happy, but there it was. For the first time in three decades, Laura Ferno actually felt good.

And as if on cue, Laura was interrupted by a persistent, forceful knock, and Cara's frantic voice from behind the penthouse door. She peeked through the peephole and jumped back when a fish-eyed view of Cara's eyeball suddenly filled up her vision.

"I know you're in there," Cara yelled through the door. "Who the fuck is the 'Glass Man?'"


End file.
